


Empty, Filled

by sasha_b



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angry Erik, Angst, Charles-centric, Flashbacks, Kink Meme, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Pre-Movie(s), my version of what might have happened in the middle of the film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Charles rejects a mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty, Filled

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.
> 
> For the five times prompt found at the LJ kink meme. I apologize to the OP - I have a feeling they wanted a bit more true rejection here, but this is what I thought Charles would do, so that's what I ended up writing.
> 
> Again, happy to be back in their world and this fandom. 
> 
> All lines from X-Men First Class and X-Men Days of Future Past belong to their respective authors.

1.

The magnolias in Washington seem oddly out of place; Charles had expected more cherry trees, or oaks, or something other than the giant white fragrant blossoms that are currently exploding their waxy blooms everywhere.

He likes them. They don’t have many things like that back home, and since he’s not been to the south, he’s never really seen them. Stepping up to one that has a flower at eye level, he pulls the branch closer to his nose and inhales, closing his eyes. A deep breath, the sun gently at his back, a breeze blowing, Erik waiting for him on the steps –

_zzzzzzzz_

He jerks back and snorts, the bee he’s tried to inhale buzzing madly about his head, angry and attempting to sting the hell out of him for bothering its pollinating. Charles flaps his hands and backs away, still shooting air out of his nose, the water in the reflecting pool dangerously behind him.

Erik’s hand is on his shoulder, steadying him, laughter in his eyes and tumbling loudly from his mouth. Charles shoves him away and nearly trips over the couple walking past them around the Mall – the man gives him a strange look and Charles jumps immediately mentally into the other man’s mind without meaning to, his embarrassment flooding through his normal control.

_what do they think they’re doing idiot tourists_

There was a lot more, but Charles, feeling Erik’s hand still on his sweater covered shoulder, jerks himself back out of the wandering man’s mind, refusing to go anywhere else near that level of negativity. They may be idiot tourists, but they’re doing work that will affect everyone’s safety, and the future of humankind, really, despite the fact the stranger doesn’t know it. He turns to Erik, cocking his head and making a face.

“Come on, Erik. It’s not that funny.”

“Yes it was.”

Charles laughs and wipes at his nose, letting the brush with the stranger drift from his mind. He won’t waste time on people – or mutants – that can’t look past their own inner demons. Not the ones he can’t help.

He follows Erik back to the steps below the Lincoln Memorial and the chessboard they have set up there, nose still itching from the close contact with the unexpected bee.

2.

Charles is alone in the house.

Hank’s gone somewhere, ostensibly to get some ingredients he needs for the serum Charles has recently broken down _he needs it, there’s too much pain_ and started taking. He’s walking decently, but his back still hurts and there are days when the sounds that invade his brain are too much, and he just –

There’s a knock at the door, and he can sense – muddily, but a bit – there’s some sort of delivery person outside. He struggles to his feet and walks, slowly, hand on the wall, his lower back screaming and his mind awash in muzzy words from outside, to the door, his hand reaching for the knob without thinking about it.

He opens the door and the thoughts from the man holding a package assail him.

_what’s with this guy he looks like a druggie wasn’t this some sort of school at some point where’s the booze he reeks of it he canhardlystandidon’twanttobeherethisfeelswrong_

Charles wavers and clutches at his back, and he grits his teeth and _shoves_ and there’s blessed silence, silence that’s his friend, silence that’s the only thing he can tolerate anymore.

“Just give it to me,” he grits out, taking the package and scrawling his name on the clipboard the man – smiling falsely – hands him. Charles slams the door and sinks to his haunches, the package dropped, the pain in his back throbbing with his heart, his head filled with too much – too many things - he sucks in a breath and scrubs hands through his hair, wondering if he’ll sleep tonight.

_You never have to steal again._

His face crumples and he thinks of her, again, missing her like it was yesterday she’d left him, and he trembles and waits for Hank to get home, so he can blot out the nothing that’s become his everything, now.

3.

He catches Raven staring at herself in the mirror. She’s wearing a robe, but he can see the edge of her blue shoulder and her red, red hair. He cocks his head and his blue eyes narrow when he sees her shoulders hitch, can hear her crying, and without thought he touches his temple and his mind brushes hers, and she must be too upset to realize it, and he sees something he shouldn’t.

He sees her in a place she doesn’t want to be, and he’s with her.

He sees her become annoyed at something he’s said while he’s drinking at the club, sees her getting her hackles up as he tries to pick up a girl, yes, pretty, but Raven’s still being left alone by him, again. And he sees her crying when she can’t seem to make the color of her hair stick when she’s upset.

He closes his eyes and lets go of her mind, ashamed and tired and sad. He won’t go there again. He won’t spend his life trying to control her, trying to make her a certain way, trying to protect her when he feels she needs it.

He turns and strides to the kitchen, wiping a thumb under his eyes, knowing that he’s just lied to himself and it makes his gut twist.

But he knows that he’ll still do it, no matter the fact that it’s not what Raven would want.

4.

Charles sits in his chair and the others – his students – stand behind him and face the US president with no fear.  The lightning dissipates as quickly as it had come.

Charles tells the president how things are going to be, and the man seems to agree, without Charles delving into his mind.

He had thought about it, but one brush was enough – the whole city makes him feel vaguely sick.

He values the sanity of his own mind more than the chance to look into the inner workings of any politician.

5.

Five years into Erik’s incarceration, the people at the Pentagon contact Charles, knowing some of his involvement in the Cuba affair, and wanting some information that they just can’t get out of the mutant terrorist no matter how they try.

Charles, halfway through his second tumbler of 20 year old scotch, laughs over the tinny telephone line, the man on the other end of the line telling him _there’s nothing funny about it, professor, we need your help to analyze him_ , despite Charles telling him _there’s no professor here._

He won’t do it.

“That man is a monster,” he tells the government official down the line. “He’s where he needs to be. You don’t need me to tell you that.” He rings off before the other man can say anything else.

It’s bright outside, and Charles takes a sip of the scotch, the burn lighting his lungs, the fire never dulled no matter his constant use of the drink. The curtains in his study are drawn, and he curls on the big sofa, his hair lank and greasy, his clothing musty and old and he doesn’t care, really, since the serum. He takes it regularly and it keeps his spine working, keeps the voices at bay. It’s been so long since he’s heard any, he can’t remember what it feels like. His rusty, useless brain.

He remembers the actions, though, remembers what the stretching process was like – remembers brushing his thoughts against others’ thoughts and how that was the most powerful buzz in the whole world. No drink could match that.

_You’re not alone. Erik – you’re not alone._

“Fuck that,” he spits out, and downs the rest of the tumbler.

He’s got plenty of money to last him as long as he needs. He doesn’t have to work or teach. He can sit on this couch and take Hank’s serum and maybe drink himself to death.

Wouldn’t that be the most selfish thing in the world?

He’s lost everything, everyone, and this is just the way things are. He can be that man he was with Erik – before Erik left him and took Raven with him – or he can be _this_ , with no pain in his crippled spine and no thoughts ripping through his bleeding and broken mind.

“Wait."

He picks up the phone, and asks the operator to dial back the person that had just called him.

*

Charles is dressed neatly, but his hair is dirty and slicked back from his face. He stands by himself in a round room several hundred feet below the ground – it is chilly and stark and the man behind the glass can’t see him as it’s two way special glass.

Charles licks his lips and crosses his arms, his eyes feeling too big for his head.

Erik sits cross-legged on the ground, his hands resting on his knees, his face serene, his eyelids closed. There is nothing in the room save a cot and a glass pitcher for water. The lighting is cool white and it’s like swimming in air, empty, devoid of anything that gives the place any definition.

Charles wonders if they give him anything to read, or if he’s been alone with his thoughts for five years.

He laughs, bitterly, but pinches his lips shut, hoping the other man can’t hear him – Erik doesn’t move.

Charles reaches a hand up to his left temple.

The laugh he’d let go earlier wants to come back – the gesture had been automatic, he’d been ready to see what Erik was thinking at the drop of a hat, but of course, he can’t. He sacrificed his powers so that he could walk.

So that he could sleep.

So that he could survive his losses. The things Erik took from him, including his legs and his powers, now.

He turns and makes a gesture, the guard letting him out of the round room, the tears he’d thought he cry for Erik, no matter the fact the other man is a monster, an evil thing, not coming. They’re not even hinted at. Charles signs the papers they want him to sign, gives them a bit of information – intel they say will help them, but it’s truly innocuous stuff anyone could find out if they had half a brain – and leaves in his car, Hank silent and unquestioning.

*

He wakes that night with the thudding bass of pain in his back, and his head muddy and thick with other people’s thoughts.

His first _it’s too far, I can’t find him_ thought is to tap into the returning power but as he rolls out of bed, he can’t support his weight and he crumples to the floor of his opulent – misused – disorganized – bedroom and sucks back a sound that might have been Erik’s name –

He clutches the base of his spine and curls in a ball and _damn it where is the serum_ but wait – wait – what – is that –

_charles_

It’s fuzzy and it’s in the middle of a suruss of sound he can’t begin to try and filter but he clings to it and follows the name that’s repeated –

_charles_

“Erik?” he says out loud, waiting; his eyes swimming with the pain in his spine, the injury flaring to life brightly. How long had it been since his last dose? He closes his eyes and _pushes_

and there’s blackness and rage and a pure red blinding hate he barely recognizes and he jerks back with an audible gasp even as the final _charles?_ rockets around his head, richoceted, leaving furrows in his brain.

Everything he’d seen in that brief moment – he’d seen Erik, buried inside a wall of anger.

_There’s so much more to you than pain and anger._

He shudders to his feet and calls for Hank, desperation in his voice, limping down the hall, the tears he’d thought about earlier at the Pentagon coming now. He tells himself they’re from the pain in his back, but all he can think of is Erik’s anger and how it was like he’d never known Charles at all.

Anger and sadness rolled into one massive, living black mass.

He sleeps till one pm the next day, the double dose of serum knocking him out for eighteen hours straight.

When Hank tentatively broaches the subject of the Washington visit with him, Charles looks at him until the other man closes his mouth.

“I need my own set up in my rooms, Hank, please.”

That night when he climbs into bed, the needles and the tubing are there, and he juices himself full of blissful numbing serum and the last thought he has is

_I’m never getting into that head again_

and he’s not sure which he means – Erik’s?

Or his own.

**Author's Note:**

> I am an Erik fangirl, but this movie has sucked me into Charles' angst and I can't get out. 
> 
> I feel as though this last section might make it seem Erik is nothing but anger, but I wanted him to be like he was before Charles found him and he had kind of lost sight of the rage AND serenity portion.
> 
> Feedback is love.


End file.
